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The_Sort_Command

Related commands:

comm — Compare two sorted files line by line. join — Join the lines of two files which share a common field of data. uniq — Identify, and optionally filter out, repeated lines in a file.

sort is a simple and very useful command which will rearrange the lines in a text file so that they are sorted, numerically and alphabetically.

Sort syntax:

sort [OPTION]... [FILE]...

By default, the rules for sorting are:

1. lines starting with a number will appear before lines starting with a letter;
2. lines starting with a letter that appears earlier in the alphabet will appear before lines starting with a letter that appears later in the alphabet;
3. lines starting with a lowercase letter will appear before lines starting with the same letter in uppercase.

The rules for sorting can be changed according to the options you provide to the sort command.

You can also use the built-in sort option -o, which allows you to specify an output file:

sort -o output.txt data.txt

You can perform a reverse-order sort using the -r flag. For example, the following command:

sort -r data.txt

You can sort numbers using the -n option:

sort -n data.txt

You can sort by the second field on each line of input sort -k 2

Parts of fields can be further specified with “-k n.m“, says the man page.

sort -k 2.3 should sort by the second field, starting with the third character in that field. But getting the -k x.y notation to work is tricky and for it to work just add the -b flag. For more refer to: http://unixetc.co.uk/2012/11/13/sorting-with-k-on-unix-and-linux